Standing next to an overhead projector, Maha ElGenaidi reviews
a list of Islam's basic tenets with 22 students at Archbishop
Mitty High School in San Jose. Dressed modestly in ankle-length
skirt and long-sleeved blouse, her head covered in accordance
with Muslim custom, she tells the world history honors students
about salat, the practice of praying five times a day.

``Now this is seven days a week, guys,'' ElGenaidi says. ``Weekends
included.''

ElGenaidi, 41, is co-founder of the Islamic Networks Group
(ING), which has trained and sent speakers into Bay Area middle
and high schools for nearly a decade. The idea is to counter
stereotypes by helping social studies teachers supplement and
put a human face on their annual, required textbook unit on Islam.
Increasingly busy in the post-Sept. 11 era, San Jose-based ING
has 15 volunteer speakers who made about 750 classroom presentations
about Islam last year. They also spoke at dozens of churches,
senior centers, corporations and forums for law enforcement officers
and healthcare workers.

ElGenaidi and co-founder Ameena Jandali are ING's engine and
soul, running it as a passion without pay and turning it into
a national model for teaching about religion in the public square.

In California, it has been almost 15 years since educational
reforms set academic instruction about religion firmly into the
world history and social sciences curricula, so that children
will understand how major faiths have shaped history and civilization.
Many non-public schools also observe these guidelines.

``The state made it a requirement to teach about religion,''
ElGenaidi says. ``But they haven't given teachers adequate resources
to do that. Nor have they taught teachers how to teach about
religion, which makes them reluctant to approach the subject.
Some skip it or skim it, because they're afraid about the separation
between church and state. What they don't understand is that,
while they cannot promote religion, they can teach about it.
That's where we come in.''

Since the reforms were made, ING has become a success story:
Two Muslim women in Silicon Valley have built a one-of-a-kind
educational group, spinning off a network of 18 affiliated, Islamic
speakers bureaus in 12 states, from Arizona to Nebraska and New
York, as well as two in Canada.

With so many affiliated bureaus cropping up during the past
two years, ING has become a prototype: It doesn't proselytize,
it describes the faith, and it emphasizes the commonalities among
Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Speakers are trained according
to secular guidelines, developed by the Washington, D.C.-based
Freedom Forum and its First Amendment Center, for teaching religion
in schools. Each bureau, though operating independently, receives
training from ING and commits itself to the vision of teaching
about Islam, never preaching.

``There's a sensitivity issue,'' ElGenaidi explains. ``If
these were Muslim kids and you had a Christian or Hindu speaker
coming into the classroom, how would Muslim parents want that
handled? That's our standard. Faith is between the kids and their
parents. I don't give students our office number or e-mail. I
don't even give them our Web site. If a kid asks for a copy of
the Koran, we always say, `Ask the teacher about it.' ''

Demand for information about Islam is growing nationally,
and the new start-up bureaus are struggling to keep up with demand.
The Phoenix bureau has half a dozen speakers. The one in San
Diego has 10. In Boston, where plans for a formal bureau are
on hold, 70 people showed up for training as speakers in October.
Ten were selected.

In Minneapolis, bureau director Zafar Siddiqui had eight trained
speakers available when Sept. 11 happened. ``We were a nascent
group, just getting established,'' he says, ``and suddenly we
found ourselves deluged with tons of requests for presentations
on Islam from schools, churches, colleges, universities, book
clubs, coffee shops, law enforcement agencies and hospitals.''
He now has 25 speakers working for him.

At a time of increasing ethnic and religious diversity in
classrooms around the state and nation, demystifying religion
is an essential, ElGenaidi figures. ``Because of changing demographics,''
she says, ``people and professional groups are interested in
cultural competency.''

And at a time when Islam is held in suspicion by some people
-- and when teaching about Islam in schools is being challenged
by some conservatives -- ElGenaidi knows what a tightrope she
and her colleagues are walking.

``Since Sept. 11, the presentations feel really different
to me,'' she says. ``I feel that I have to begin by condemning
terrorism, by disassociating myself from Osama bin Laden, and
being clear that the hijackers are not martyrs.''

But walking into the classroom at Mitty, she deals with more
mundane matters. She tells the students that she is married to
a software engineer. She explains that Islam is the source not
only of her religious belief, but of her cultural identity, her
diet and style of dress. Born in Cairo, she is Egyptian, Arab,
and, for more than 30 years, American. ``I'm not a woman living
under the Taliban,'' she quips.

But, she adds, ``I wear my Islam. To understand my identity,
you have to know about my religious beliefs and practices.''

ElGenaidi is visiting Mitty, a Catholic school, at the invitation
of world history teacher Nick Bridger. Every year, in accordance
with the California state framework for social studies instruction,
Bridger's 10th-graders learn about the history of Islam.

This year's group, which is heavily Roman Catholic, already
knows some of the basics: that Islam is a monotheistic faith;
that it traces its origins to Abraham; that it holds up Muhammad
as its principal prophet, though not its only one.

The students want to know whether Islam has a rite analogous
to baptism -- it does not -- and whether Muslims are allowed
to marry people of other faiths. Only men are allowed, ElGenaidi
says. As ``primary provider'' at home, the man generally exercises
more authority. And since Islam recognizes the prophets of Judaism
and Christianity, a Muslim man who marries a non-Muslim woman
would allow her to practice her faith freely. ``In fact,'' ElGenaidi
tells the students, ``he is required to do so by Islamic law.''

Also, Islam is a patrilineal faith: Children follow the religion
of the father. Even if he marries outside the religion, the family's
Muslim lineage will continue.

ElGenaidi explains that most of the world's more than 1 billion
Muslims are Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi -- fewer than one
in five is Arab. She shows them a page of Arabic and explains
that it is read from right to left, like Hebrew. She adds that
Moses is a prophet in the Islamic tradition, as is Jesus, though
he is not considered to be the son of God.

Her presentation was ``so good,'' Bridger said later. ``Textbooks
are kind of flat, and kids are inundated with media. But hearing
this in person, they were able to toss ideas at her and see how
she can be a very contemporary person and still practice this
ancient religion. She had a good impact.''

ElGenaidi, whose father was a psychiatrist, grew up in a largely
secular home, first in Cairo and then on the East Coast. Jandali
grew up in an observant Muslim home in Fort Collins, Colo., the
daughter of a Pakistani-born college professor and a convert
mother.

As young women, both ElGenaidi and Jandali, now 41, were profoundly
aware of negative depictions of Muslims in movies, on television,
and in other parts of U.S. culture. Jandali remembers a family
friend whose daughter complained of inaccuracies about Islam
in textbooks: `` `Muslims pray by hitting their heads on the
sand,' that kind of thing.''

The friend, it turns out, was Shabbir Mansuri, the founder
and director of the Council on Islamic Education in Orange County.
In 1989, Mansuri became aware of the new California state framework
for teaching about religion in the schools.

That framework is for a social studies curriculum in which
students in the seventh grade -- and again in the ninth or 10th
grade -- learn about the rise and growth of Islam as a religion
and civilization. In the past month, conservative writers have
charged that the state framework overplays Islam, and a San Luis
Obispo mother filed a complaint, saying that her seventh-grader's
textbook was biased toward Islam. The study of Judaism and Christianity
is part of the sixth-grade state curriculum and is woven into
portions of middle and high school study.

Mansuri came up with the idea of establishing a bureau of
Muslim speakers to go into the schools and talk about Islam.
Working with the Freedom Forum, which advocates church-state
separation as it lobbies for religious freedom, he began to train
Stanford students as speakers in California middle and high schools.
Always, Mansuri says, the speakers ``were to be there with the
permission of the teacher, to make the presentation and leave.
They were not there to proselytize or promote a religion.

``I am very, very strict about this,'' Mansuri says. His efforts
served as the ``incubator'' for ING, he says. Mansuri continues
to mentor ElGenaidi and Jandali and remains involved with the
training of speakers and new bureau directors around the country.

``I go in there and make sure,'' he says, ``that we are very,
very careful and within the First Amendment principles that give
us a place at the table in America. We should never abuse our
place at the table by proselytizing.''

It is imperative that speakers -- from any religion -- ``not
take advantage of a captive audience in a state-sponsored institution,''
says Marcia Beauchamp, until recently the religious freedom programs
coordinator for the First Amendment Center, an independent program
of the Freedom Forum. ``I'd love to see other religious communities
doing what ING does and training speakers in the same way.''

ElGenaidi and Jandali met a decade ago while raising funds
for Bosnian relief. The Muslim community already had its political
and civil rights advocacy groups. Education was the missing piece.
In 1993, they established Bay Area Media Watch, which attempted
to monitor -- and educate -- local media about coverage of Muslims
and Islam. After three months, they changed the name to Islamic
Networks Group and began to focus on education in schools.

ElGenaidi, who has a background in marketing, sent mailings
to well over 1,000 social studies teachers and educators. She
had a 17 percent response rate, and ING made 300 school presentations
in its first year.

In the mid-'90s, the group put an emphasis on meeting with
police. ElGenaidi recalls counseling officers that, when responding
to a domestic dispute in a Muslim home, the wife ``may jump if
you touch her. She may not want to be alone with you. They may
not want you to step inside with your shoes on, so you might
want to ask them to step outside. And you need to accept all
of this as American. Muslims are now part of the social fabric
of the American society that you need to learn about.''

Now, nearly six months after the September attacks, churches
have become ``the new door'' through which ING reaches out to
non-Muslims, Jandali said. Also, corporations concerned about
employee discrimination lawsuits are starting to phone the ING
office for advice about cultural sensitivity.

Even with the help of assistants, the two founders work 60-hour
weeks, and still haven't been paid a penny -- by choice. However,
they would like to see their staff grow.

ING has a $400,000 budget, but has never been able to raise
more than $200,000 in a year. It recently hired a managing director,
Dian Alyan, a former brand manager for Procter & Gamble,
who is looking into foundation grants.

The organization is growing in stature. ElGenaidi and Jandali
have become familiar faces on the podium at national Islamic
conferences. On a recent afternoon at the ING office, ElGenaidi
answered the phone, offered a few suggestions to the caller,
then hung up, saying, ``Time magazine. They're doing something
on Afghan women.''

After nearly a decade of hard work, Jandali is encouraged:
``For a lot of people, when we walk in the room, it's the first
time they've met an American Muslim. Just humanizing this very
mysterious religion for them, it's a positive thing. It's a pleasant
surprise for them that Islam is not just this horrible, violent
religion that oppresses people.

``They go, `Wow, I didn't know you guys believe in the prophets.
I didn't know you believe that Jesus is a prophet. Wow, I can
relate to this. It's not that different from what I believe in
my own religion.' ''